What’s the Beef? Trump Wants Short Term Fixes; Long Term Fixes Are Much More Difficult – RedState

By Kenneth Rapoza, Coalition for a Prosperous America

About two weeks ago, Trump got into a fight with America’s cattle ranchers. They are a reliable MAGA constituent, so this was a strange fight to pick. But Trump saw the rising cost of beef (up 14.7% in 12 months), something we were all complaining about in the Biden years, and hit ranchers with a Muhammed Ali clothesline. He blamed them for beef inflation. He said he would import more duty-free Argentinian beef in the hope that prices would fall.

“Cattle ranchers, whom I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I imposed tariffs on livestock entering the United States, including a 50% tariff on Brazil,” Trump wrote. “They also need to lower their prices, because the consumer is also a very important factor in my thinking!”

His comments sparked a reaction on social media. To a man, everyone was against Trump.

In one of the biggest breaks with Trump, former Trump officials and 14 Republicans led by House Ways & Means Chairman Jason Smith of Missouri said importing more beef “hurts America’s livestock producers.” They are right.

Importing beef is one of the reasons we are in this mess. Beef imports have reached record levels in recent months and this has never led to a drop in prices. This, however, led to a decline in herds in the United States. Less supply means higher prices.

Weakening of livestock: imports make livestock breeding less attractive

The United States is importing record volumes of beef and veal – between 150,000 and 185,000 tonnes per month by mid-2025. Record imports have not brought prices down.

This week, the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA), an advocacy group for domestic producers, including ranchers, said in response to Trump’s import push that rising imports have followed rising prices, exactly the opposite of the Trump administration’s logic for reopening Argentine beef imports.

“Retail prices continue to rise even as domestic production collapses, proving that imports are not the solution,” said Andrew Rechenberg, one of CPA’s economists. “Imports cannot replace a healthy and growing domestic herd. »

Every time prices rise, Washington looks overseas for a low-cost, risky solution instead of signaling to local ranchers that we support their growth. This approach hollowed out the U.S. beef industry by allowing imports – primarily from New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Canada and Brazil – to replace American cattlemen. Our national herd has fallen to 86.7 million head – the smallest since 1951.

Meanwhile, large multinational meatpackers, including two Brazilians — JBS and National Beef — are driving down domestic prices by pitting U.S. ranchers against lower-cost beef from developing countries to force U.S. ranchers to sell at unsustainable prices. These prices may be suitable for Mexican or Argentinian breeders, but not for American breeders.

The “Lead Steer”: multinationals are causing damage

Big Ag meat companies are messing up the market.

Four companies dominate approximately 81 to 85 percent of the U.S. livestock market, giving them supremacy in pricing power. If American ranchers don’t like the price, JBS will just import live cattle from Mexico or now beef from Argentina.

These guys are not ex-ranch cowboys who go to bull riding events and have a few Tennessee Walkers on their property. They might as well be a dealer in subprime mortgage-backed securities circa 2007.

In February 2025, JBS agreed to pay $83.5 million to settle an antitrust class action alleging that it, along with Tyson, Cargill and National Beef, collaborated to suppress bids at the ranch gate and inflate downstream margins – one of several ongoing cases documenting coordinated bidding, data sharing and production control in the industry.

Some breeders are trying to go it alone, with direct-to-consumer sales models. Many of them are hobby farmers and earn most of their money elsewhere. For those dedicated to it full time, livestock expansion is difficult for several reasons: Investing in an additional supply of U.S. livestock becomes less attractive if it must compete with growing imports. Those who can and want to expand often compete for land with agricultural companies. Others have properties that can’t really be expanded by more than a few acres.

Additionally, independent breeders using the direct-to-consumer model are not cheaper for consumers. They rely on smaller, independent meatpackers. These types are essentially regulated to extinction by their native states. It’s amazing that they can make a profit.

A Vermont rancher told me that small processors often face higher compliance costs per unit of production than large factory farms. This places them at a competitive disadvantage and limits their ability to compete with more consolidated meatpackers who have diverse lines of business, thereby exacerbating the cartel-like power of meatpackers.

For a small meat processing plant, the true cost of regulation and compliance includes significant initial and ongoing financial expenses for food safety plans, facility and equipment upgrades, and laboratory testing. These direct expenses of tens of thousands of dollars for each regulation are compounded by indirect costs, such as farm labor and consultants you have to hire for audits every year for things like hazard analysis and health standards.

U.S. breeders need both import relief and some regulatory relief for smaller players to make growth attractive to independents. Americans who don’t like industrial agriculture and are willing to pay extra for it will have more options. Breeders will have more buyers than the big four.

The United States was once a net exporter of beef. We have been a net importer for at least three years.

The move to imports was a move pushed by global meatpackers. As a result, beef has become another item, along with health insurance, rent and electricity bills, that increases the cost of living. This higher cost of living issue poses a huge obstacle for Trump, and he knows it. That’s why he’s trying to drive down prices by flooding the United States with Argentine beef. In the short term, this might work a little. In the long run, this only exacerbates the problems.

“The solution is to rebuild the U.S. cattle herd and restore sustainable ranching to the country,” Rechenberg said, adding that Trump should establish a Section 232 tariff rate quota on beef and cattle imports to protect U.S. ranchers and make health standards a national security priority. One reason beef prices have increased is that the USDA, under pressure from independent livestock groups, agreed to ban live cattle imports from Mexico due to a beef worm infestation.

CPA also believes Trump should enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act and antitrust law to combat collusion, require transparency in packers’ pricing, and allow the Justice Department to pursue these companies for anticompetitive practices.

These measures would create a real demand signal for American breeders. This would give them the market clarity to invest and expand herds instead of shrinking them, thanks to constant import pressure.

Kenneth Rapoza is an industry analyst at the Coalition for a Prosperous America. He is a former Wall Street Journal reporter in Brazil and senior correspondent for Forbes covering Brazil, Russia, India and China between 2011 and 2020.

Editor’s note: Schumer’s closure is here. Rather than putting the American people first, Chuck Schumer and radical Democrats forced a government shutdown on health care for illegal immigrants. They own that.

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